Authors: Anthony Izzo
The Dark Ones (12 page)
In wheezing, wet breaths, Schuler said, “Nice of you to show.” He rested his head back on the concrete.
“By tomorrow night, you’ll wish you had never signed on for this. Mr. Hark will see to it.”
Got to get out of here
, Mike thought. Even if he called the cops and they wound up charging him and shipping him to Attica or Clinton, Mom would be saved, and maybe Schuler. At least from whatever fate Hark had lined up for him.
, Mike thought. Even if he called the cops and they wound up charging him and shipping him to Attica or Clinton, Mom would be saved, and maybe Schuler. At least from whatever fate Hark had lined up for him.
Mike went over to Schuler, gripped his arm, and pulled him up. Wrapping Schuler’s arm around his neck, Mike dragged Schuler to the wall, sat him down, and leaned him against the beer cases. Schuler stared at Mike through his good eye, and to Mike it seemed accusatory:
You got me into this
. He had. He had been the one to call Schuler, and he had been the one to bail out on the arson job. But try explaining to Hark that carnival freaks had shown up on the site and scared them off.
You got me into this
. He had. He had been the one to call Schuler, and he had been the one to bail out on the arson job. But try explaining to Hark that carnival freaks had shown up on the site and scared them off.
“So?” Schuler said.
“I feel like you look.”
“That room, Mike? We’re done.”
He imagined a soundproof room where a bullet would be delivered into the backs of their skulls. There were probably blood and brains on the walls.
“At least it will be quick,” Mike said.
“Who are you kidding?”
Mike looked up at the big man. He observed the conversation with a small smile on his face, as if he were watching actors in a play.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s like the Spanish Inquisition in there, Mike.” Schuler coughed, and air came out his nose in wet, snuffling gasps. “Know how my nose got like this?”
Mike wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
“One of those meat-tenderizing hammers, that’s how.”
Mike winced. Hark’s man started up the stairs, chuckling low. Mike thought he heard the guy whisper to himself, “This is gonna be good.”
The door slammed shut and Mike heard the click of a lock.
“They were waiting in my house,” Schuler said. “I’m standing at the bathroom sink and one of them slips in behind me and I see him and a big gun in the mirror and it’s pointed at my head.”
“They followed us.”
“To the site?”
“I’m guessing they did. Or maybe saw it on the news.”
“Whatever they did, we’re screwed. We should have just torched the whole place. Fuck those costumed freaks.”
Mike sat up, the rough wall digging into his back. “And have witnesses? How is that any better?”
“My whole face hurts.”
“A lot more is going to hurt if we don’t find a way out.”
Mike stood up and looked around. No windows in the basement, only damp concrete walls. He tried the door to the other room, yanked on the handle, but it didn’t budge. He climbed the stairs, thinking it useless to try, but he jiggled the knob anyway. The door held tight.
“Any luck?” Schuler asked from downstairs.
“Nothing.”
Upstairs, he heard the slow thump of bass as someone had fired up a country tune, maybe Alan Jackson. The music seemed to make the floor joists shake and it annoyed Mike. The music would also provide another purpose when the time came. No one would hear their screams.
CHAPTER 9
In the early morning, David and Reverend Frank pulled into the parking lot of the Savings Motor Lodge. A steady sheet of rain fell around them, forcing the wipers to work overtime. Thunder and lightning echoed around them, and the center of the parking lot had pooled with brownish water. Fighting exhaustion and the storm, they had decided to take refuge for the night. It was only a hundred more miles to Routersville, but David’s eyes felt grainy and heavy. Even the high-test coffee he picked up from the truck stop on 81 failed to keep him alert.
Frank had checked them in, and they followed a pink stucco wall past a pop machine, to their room. Number 190 in tarnished brass on the pink door. David had expected a fleabag, but to his surprise, a pleasant vanilla smell filled the room, and the thick carpet appeared new. Two single beds were neatly made and a quick peek in the bathroom showed sparkling tiles and toilet. It wasn’t half bad.
They set their suitcases on the beds, David closer to the window, Frank closer to the door. “Best lock up tight,” David said. The feeling of something closing in on him, the same one he’d had as he approached the church parking lot, crept over him again. Several times on the wooded highway that led up to the hotel he thought he saw movement in the brush. Then it would dart away. He removed the revolver from his suitcase and set it on the nightstand.
Frank locked the door. As he returned to his bed and unzipped the suitcase, he said, “You think the gun is necessary?”
“It makes me feel better.”
“You may have to use the Light again, you know.”
“Not until I have to.”
“You will, Dave, or you’re putting us both at risk.”
“For now it’s the gun,” Dave said.
“You think they’re following us?”
Wind spattered against the picture window. David got up and drew the curtain shut. “I couldn’t be sure, but while you were driving, I kept seeing things in the woods. Moving quick and then out of my view.”
“We’d better keep watch,” Frank said.
“I’ll go first.”
Despite the weariness that had crept into his muscles, David felt wound up, spring-tight. If he went to bed now, he would toss and turn, stare at the ceiling. He thought of Sara. Were the Dark Ones on to her? Was she cold, hungry? He knew she probably had a little money saved, but it wouldn’t go far. And how would she find her way in a strange city? No, sleep would not come easy.
“If they come, you have to use it. It’s the only way to destroy them for sure,” Frank said.
“We’ll see,” David said, and eyed the revolver.
David sat on the bed, flipped on the tube. A
Seinfeld
episode, then the local news. The storm had trailed off for a while, but now fresh thunderheads rumbled.
Seinfeld
episode, then the local news. The storm had trailed off for a while, but now fresh thunderheads rumbled.
On the other bed, Frank lay stretched out in a pair of sweats and a T-shirt that proclaimed him
WORLD’S GREATEST GRANDPA
. He held the Bible in front of him, reading glasses perched on his nose. “I talked to Charles.”
WORLD’S GREATEST GRANDPA
. He held the Bible in front of him, reading glasses perched on his nose. “I talked to Charles.”
“And?”
Frank told him how the brewery building had come down and Charles wasn’t sure if it would hold its occupant.
“I also called Chen from that rest stop on 81. While you were in the bathroom.”
“She making preparations?”
“She’s calling together the rest of our people, figuring out how to warn the rest of the town. Thinks maybe we can all hole up in the old armory if need be.”
Hopefully it wouldn’t come to that. “Is Charles going to check the site?”
“Are you kidding?” Frank said.
“Right. The Gray Crusader. Of course he will.”
Frank closed his Bible and turned off the light. They agreed to take two-hour shifts on watch. David got up and turned down the television. He eyed Frank’s Bible and wished he were more of a reader, but he had always been good with his hands. Carpentry, electrical, and plumbing just came to him. It was good to know, and drywall jobs brought in extra money, but it would be nice to be a bookworm at times, too.
He took a seat at the table, ran his thumb over the handle of the revolver. He would have to use the Light if it came to it. But could he?
Dave had not seen battle the way Frank or Charles had. His sole experience with his power had come by accident. He remembered freshman year, Taft Senior High School. He had been a skinny kid whose backpack had seemed to outweigh him. None of his friends from St. Edmund’s had gone to Taft, and he felt a little like a new inmate arriving in the state pen. The summer before freshman year, he had begun to feel different. He found himself thinking of warm days at the beach, sun-kissed wheatfields, sunbeams cutting dust motes through the living room windows. Images of light, flooding his mind, a comforting warmth running through him and not from the eighty-five-degree heat. It wasn’t unlike slipping into a warm bath and feeling calm and relaxed.
In the first week at Taft, navigating the green-tiled hallways, he had caught the attention of Garrett Garvey. Garvey, he came to find out, dealt hash and coke to select students at Taft. Garvey also had a connection that could get him beer, vodka, anything. For fifty bucks he’d score you a case of beer or a bottle of your choice. Apparently Dave’s fellow freshmen made good use of Garvey’s services, pooling paper-route and lawn-mowing money and getting drunk down at Cooley Field on the weekends. Dave preferred to stay away. One day he was approached by Garrett in the hall, offering him a small bag of weed. Dave turned it down. Garvey kept it up. He offered Dave a snootful of coke in the bathroom, told him he could score
Hustler
or
Cheri
, or if Dave wanted some freaky shit, he could get Japanese porn. Dave had turned him down.
Hustler
or
Cheri
, or if Dave wanted some freaky shit, he could get Japanese porn. Dave had turned him down.
This had gone on a couple times a week, from September up until mid-December. The week before break, Dave had excused himself from class, taking the wood block that functioned as a lav pass and hitting the bathroom. Upon entering, he saw Garvey, all six feet four inches of him, standing in the stall, door open. His nose was chafed and red. He rubbed his nose with a slim index finger, and Dave saw little white granules stuck to his upper lip. His eyes were glazed and he jittered out of the stall.
“Hey, Dresser,” he said, sniffing. “You want to join me?” He held up a silver cylinder with a twist-off cap. “Blow your brains out?”
“I don’t do that shit. You shouldn’t, either.”
This seemed to set Garvey off and in two quick strides he had grabbed Dave by the shirt and pressed him against the wall. The lav pass clattered on the floor.
“What’s wrong with you, Dresser?”
“Nothing.”
“Not what I heard. Must be a fag to pass up porn.”
“Let me go.”
“Take a hit. Come on.”
Dave struggled and the grip grew tighter on his shirt. His bladder felt hot and full. He really needed to go. Garvey was creeping him out.
“Come on, pussy,” Garvey said, and thunked Dave’s head against the wall.
That had been it, a trigger for the release. Dave managed to slip one arm up and push, and when he pushed he felt a surge of heat race through his arm and a flash lit up the bathroom. Garvey screamed and turned away. He let go of Dave and dropped to one knee. One hand covered the side of his face. His white button-down had a scorch on the chest and Dave saw the side of Garvey’s face. It had turned into a mess of pink skin and fresh blisters had popped up.
To his surprise, Garvey began to weep. “You burned me, why did you burn me? Oh God, it hurts, it hurts.”
Garvey had run from the bathroom and in a matter of minutes, Dave had been sent to see Mr. Wiggins, the principal. After interrogating Dave, and calling in his parents, Wiggins arrived at the conclusion that Dave had burned Garvey with a lighter and some sort of chemical igniter. Never mind that they didn’t find a lighter or any type of flammable material. Not on Dave’s person, in his locker, in the john, or even in the bathroom garbage cans. He got suspended for a week, and Garvey wound up having plastic surgery, which left the side of his face a puckered pink mess. He never offered Dave drugs again, and gave Dave a wide berth in the halls. Last Dave heard, Garvey was serving a sentence up in Michigan City for dealing heroin.
So he hadn’t wanted to use the Light, even with their enemy on the loose and the stories Frank and Charles had told him, how the Dark Ones preferred to capture and torture rather than kill outright. How they sometimes roasted captives alive and consumed the flesh. He hoped when the time came he could use his power on them.
Dave caught himself dozing off. His head snapped back and he awoke. The clock on the wall said two thirty. Time to turn in and get some sleep. He rubbed his neck, massaging out the kink that had settled in, stood up and stretched.
Outside, he heard a bang. Something being tipped over. Maybe just a cat or a wayward raccoon in the trash can, but maybe not.
Picking up the revolver, he slipped over to the door, killed the overhead light, and peeked out the curtain. Outside he saw only the rain-slicked pavement and a few lights burning outside each hotel room across the way. He watched, squinted, thinking that something might move, the very darkness itself, take form and move toward the window.
A moment later, he heard a scream. A man, but high pitched. It was with dread that he realized the Enemy was here. He could stop Them. The poor bastard outside could not.
He unlocked the door, hands shaking from the fear of something waiting just outside. Throwing open the door, he pointed the revolver and let in the rain-soaked air, which was bitter and acrid.
He heard Frank sit up, the rustle of sheets behind him, and then Frank saying, “Where are you going?”
David didn’t stop, but instead went outside and looked around. To his left were a few parked SUVs and to his right the soda machine, maybe forty feet away. He heard the victim now, soft whimpers carrying down the alley, punctuated by crying and “Oh, Jesus.”
Now David moved toward the sound of the whimpering man, his heart rabbiting in his chest, thinking he might get jumped at any second. He passed the soda machine and found a door bashed open. He moved inside and flipped on the light and saw the man staked to the wall.
He had been pinned like an insect on display for an entomologist, a black stake through his gut and a spreading stain on his pajamas. He looked at David with pleading, wet eyes and then lowered his head and tugged at the stake. David put a hand over his mouth and nose to block out the metallic smell of blood and the odor of ripe shit coming from the room. He stifled a gag.
David raised his hand. “Don’t pull it out, you’ll rip out your insides. I’ll call for help.”
The man responded with a hacking cough, a rope of blood coming from his mouth and spattering the bed. The brutality of the attack stunned David.
The Reverend came up behind, bumped into David, and David moved out of the way to give Frank a good look. Frank gasped, started forward, and then, perhaps realizing he could do nothing, stopped.
“I’ll call the paramedics,” Frank said. “God help him.”
David approached the man, whose head sank down. The front of his pajama pants were saturated black, and the man’s hands, which had gripped the stake, now hung at his side. David reached up, felt the man’s neck, checking for a pulse, but found none. There was no helping this one, so he went to the door and scanned the parking lot. Something caught his eye on the opposite roof, something black and deformed, crawling along the ridgeline.
He raised the revolver to fire. He never heard Frank approach. The Reverend slapped his arm down and, frowning, said, “We’ve got to go.”
David saw that Frank had dressed, or at least thrown on a pair of khakis with his T-shirt.
“But they’re attacking the hotel. Look,” David said, and pointed.
Frank looked over at the roof. “We’ll do no good dead. We have to move. And if the cops come, we’ll only be held up,” Frank said.
“What about the rest of the people? And using the Light?”
“They’re looking for us, David. The people will have to fend for themselves. This is too important.”
He couldn’t believe what he was hearing from the Reverend. What about all the people in those rooms? And what if some of them had kids? Would they all be gutted and hung on walls like some sick trophy?
“I can’t believe you,” David said.
Frank gripped him by the shoulders. “I know it’s horrible, but this is one hotel, maybe thirty or forty people. If we don’t get where we’re going, it could be thirty or forty million. Probably more. Now I’ve called for help and an ambulance is on the way and the cops will follow. Okay?”
He didn’t like Frank explaining things to him as if he were a thickheaded five-year-old who had attempted crossing the street on his own. But Frank was right. If they stayed, they would be questioned, and it was either fight this small battle now, or be around to fight the big one later. Hopefully once they left, the Enemy would follow and leave the innocents sleeping in rented beds alone. But damn it, he thought of that thing slinking over the roof, probably the one that impaled the unwary traveler in the other room.
I could have plugged him, taken one with me.
I could have plugged him, taken one with me.
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